A comment presented at JRS Space Tourism Study Conference held on April 14, 1993. Edited and translated into English from taped transcript originally in Japanese. Originally published in the Journal of Space Technology and Science, Vol.9 No.1 '93 spring, pp.24-28

Editor:

Abstract:

The "Space Frontier" is the main context of Man in Space for this discussion. In the history of manned space flight, we find that the human population on the new frontier of space increased rapidly in the seventies, but remained almost constant through the eighties and until the present. This stagnation seems to have been caused by the financial difficulties of every national space program. Possible implications of this fact are that the general public, that is taxpayers, have lost interest in supporting the elite space society, but wish to both pay and participate in space activities. The most probable solution to this should be space tourism. Tourism is a big business which can build much larger and cheaper space infrastructure than the space station. It is essential for space tourism that passengers' health and safety are assured by appropriate medical standards. To date, medical science has been used mainly for selection of superman astronauts. On the other hand, in future it will be expected to accept all people as space tour passengers, in cooperation with engineers who develop comfortable space tour vehicles.